A whale of a time

YORK — Surfers and paddleboarders had an "eye-opening" experience Aug. 5, when a minke whale came by for a visit off Long Sands Beach and stayed most of the afternoon.

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By Deborah McDermott

seacoastonline.com

By Deborah McDermott

Posted Aug. 13, 2014 at 2:00 AM

By Deborah McDermott

Posted Aug. 13, 2014 at 2:00 AM

» Social News

YORK — Surfers and paddleboarders had an "eye-opening" experience Aug. 5, when a minke whale came by for a visit off Long Sands Beach and stayed most of the afternoon.

Minke whales have also been seen in the past week off of the Isles of Shoals, as they follow schooling fish such as mackerel and herring.

Linda Doughty, director of Marine Mammals of Maine, came to Long Sands around 3 p.m. after receiving a call from a beachgoer. She confirmed the whale was a juvenile minke likely weaned last spring.

She remained on scene throughout the afternoon and early evening, concerned about signs of distress, "but from how it was acting, it was fine — although its behavior was just enough to get my heart racing for a while."

Chris Rockwood and Peter Herlihy from Liquid Dreams Surf Shop were in the waters off Long Sands with nine students around noon that day when, Herlihy said, "I saw a little fin" about 50 yards offshore.

Initially thinking it was a porpoise, Herlihy said he paddled out to take a closer look — and found he was seeing what he was later told was a young, 16- to 20-foot minke whale.

"It was right there. It was swimming in circles underneath us," he said, adding that at one point as the whale neared the surface, its tail hit his foot. "It gave me goose bumps."

When the whale continued to "hang around" as the afternoon progressed, Rockwood ran home and got his GoPro waterproof camera and paddled back out.

"I was trying to get as close as I could," and he succeeded. His video of the whale from underneath the water is clear and gives a real idea of the size and fluid movements of the mammal.

"It was eye-opening. It was really interesting to see it," he said. "It was so graceful. It was amazing just to see how flowing its movement was. It proves that in these waters, anything can come through."

Herlihy said the whale was close to shore throughout the afternoon and until the sun went down, coming in as close as 20 yards offshore in the early evening.

Tony LaCasse of the New England Aquarium said an adult minke is 20 to 35 feet long and can weigh between 12,000 and 20,000 pounds. The one off Long Sands Beach probably weighed at least 5,000 pounds. Minkes generally prefer the "cold temperate" waters around the Gulf of Maine, because that's where the fish are.

"This time of year, they're looking for any type of dense schooling fish like herring or mackerel," he said.

Minkes often travel alone or in small groups of two or three, he said, noting that minkes born last fall would now be weaned from their mothers and off on their own. And that's the case with the whale seen off of York's Long Sands Beach.

He said it's not unusual for a juvenile to come close to shore as it learns the ins and outs of survival on its own.

"It's like all of us at 18- to 24-years-old. We do a lot of fumbling around," he said.

Doughty agrees. "They push their limits a little more, just like any teenager," she said.

In either case, chances are the whale will not return to Long Sands but has moved on — "which is probably in everyone's best interest," said Herlihy. He said that people were paddling out to see the whale who shouldn't have been on boards, creating an "unsafe" situation.

LaCasse said that approaching a whale is illegal under federal law, and cautioned anyone in a similar situation to be careful around them.

"An inadvertent strike, even from a juvenile like this one, could be disabling" to human beings, he said. He said people must keep their distance, because it's important whales are not "habituated" to humans.